An overlooked detail in yesterday’s terrible shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee is that one of the heroes who tackled the shooter is UT-Knoxville historian John Bohstedt. According to the New York Times, Bohstedt jumped on shooter Jim D. Adkisson while he paused to reload in spite of the other dangers Bohstedt and the other congregants might have faced. According to church member Sheila Bowen, “[Bohstedt] moved very quickly and he assessed the situation very quickly. . . . He’s sitting on this guy. [The shooter] had a package with him, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, and John was afraid that that might be a bomb, so John was screaming at everyone to get out.”

When I hear news of the latest (yes, sadly, we can only assume this is the latest, not the last) shooting in a school, a church, or other public spaces, like many of you perhaps, I wonder how I would react and if I would muster the kind of metal clarity and physical courage that Professor Bohstedt showed. His example is very inspiring, but what a world we live in where that kind of bravery is called upon so frequently. My heart goes out to the TVUUC community and their friends and allies in Knoxville and beyond.

UPDATED, 7/29/08: See this description of the attack at TVUUC by a church member who was present Sunday morning. She gives a moving account of the heroism of Greg McKendry, the first shooting victim who was shot at point-blank range trying to shield others from the bullets. She also reports that other people saw John Bohstedt take down the shooter in a “flying tackle.”

10 Responses to “John Bohstedt: British historian, tough guy”

Thanks for the heads-up on this one, Historiann. I actually read the piece in the hard-copy Times this morning, but with seemingly the same content acquisition disorder that my freshmen will be displaying in a few weeks, and thus missed the part about the herostorian. We really do seem to be veering toward a point where a friendly nearby stranger jumping on a grenade is going to be your first line of defense. What a country we have!

Joe, good point. I think that is mostly due to a particularly narrow, and extremely messed up definition of masculinity in the U.S. right now. However, I will refrain from further commentary on the terrorist and his problems until I see some more reporting–he sounds like a very messed up guy who had some real problems in addition to some ideological fixations. (In that, he seems very much to share the profile of the church shooter here in Colorado last December.) I don’t know Bohstedt or anything about his work as a scholar, but I really admire his courage under pressure.

And Indyanna: yes, clearly, that’s what our massive investment in supersizing our National Security State has won us over the past 7 years–the right to look out for ourselves and our neighbors. After all–what’s the only thing that has stopped more airplane terrorism since 9/11? Tackling your fellow crazed passenger, right? Bohstedt and the other congregants at the TVUCC are especially admirable for their courage, because they knew the guy was armed.

He works on early modern/modern Britain and Europe. Rioting, esp. food rioting; the decline of the moral economy in the face of the liberal state and its various coercive mechanisms (ironic, here, no?), and stuff like that there. Has an essay in that Applewhite/Levy edited volume on the era of the French Rev. on the “myth of the female food riot(ers?),” or something of that sort. I remember skimming through that book some years back, but am not recalling that essay in particular. Anyway, he seems to have gotten the job done the other day.

It is now clear that the terrorist who killed two people in the TVUCC was indeed ideologically motivated to murder liberals. He was a troubled person in other ways–apparently a perpetrator of domestic violence, and frustrated by unemployment.

It’s good that he wasn’t killed in the process of apprehending him. Perhaps we’ll learn something from him. But, I’m with Rad Readr: this is simply the price we pay for insisting that the right to gun ownership be largely unrestricted and the right to carry guns everywhere be untrammelled. Last winter it was a young man angry at conservative evangelical churches, this summer it’s an older man angry at liberal churches.

To suggest that a “proliferation” of gun-toting Americans is the cause of the tragedy in Knoxville is ludicrous. Let’s stop blaming the guns and start blaming those small number of individuals who abuse the constitutional privilege of carrying a weapon. Evidence clearly demonstrates that tighter gun-control laws do not reduce gun violence (I cite Washington, D.C. as a good example).